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Monday, October 14, 2013

No.

Halmstad

Hello my dearest familj.

This week has been an a d v e n t u r e.
We spent a whole day going through the area book with the Elders trying to get everything sorted out and split up and we ended up with a lot of papers of people who don’t live where it says they live. So that was discouraging. But through it all, I have become an expert map reader. I am grateful for Dad’s advice on missionary work, especially with Sweden. Knocking on doors is truly NOT the way to go about doing missionary work. My mind was exhausted this week and the best thing we could come up with was to go by 10 of the less actives that live near the city, contact along the way, and tract all of the apartments also. Not ONE of the less actives was home, so we did a lot of walking, contacting and tracting. By a lot, I mean, that is ALL we did. From 12 until 7. We received no numbers. Not one. I am shocked with the amount of Atheists that are in this area. I asked a lady what the meaning of life was to her and she just looked at me and said "no." and then just sat there and I was like... okayyyy... hahaha.
A lot of others responses were exactly what Grandpa Reed said in his email to me last week about the responses he received when he served in Sweden, "The government takes care of me, I don’t need anything else." In an apartment we tracted, a lady answered who was with her daughter (the daughter was about 30) and the mom started freaking out and hit her daughter way hard in the back and slammed the door on us and then we could hear them screaming at each other for the next 10 minutes while we tried knocking on other doors. On the same day we received texts from an unknown number in Swedish going on about how we are racists and that we are wasting our time and to go home. I think the only thing that got me through this day was singing camp songs with my comp who was a camp counselor.

I am not meaning to say only the hard things about this area, because when it all comes down to it, I am good. I am doing OK. I am learning a lot and physically, I am well taken care of. But I can’t help but feel like all of this work we are putting forth isn’t enough. I don’t understand why we can't get one person to meet with us. I don’t understand why no one will give us a chance. This has been the hardest week on my mission. When I got my call to Sweden I heard countless of times that this was going to be a hard mission, and I was going to see how long I could go with out saying that "this is harder than I expected." But... This is harder than I expected. I don’t think my prayers have been more sincere and real this week than they have been in my whole life. It is hard knowing if we are being led by the spirit or if it is just me and my own thoughts because the people who I feel inspired to talk to all say no. I just feel like there's so much more we could be doing and I don’t know what that is! I just don’t know exactly what the Lord has planned for this area but I guess that is why we are told many times to rely on the Lord and trust in his timing... One thing I seem to struggle with.

On the day that we went by 10 less actives, we went by three of them again later that night and they were all home. One of them said she was not interested. Another one said I don’t have time right now and the other invited us to come back the next day to have breakfast and help her clean her house. She is AWESOME. Her name is Lena and she is OBSESSED with cats. She only has one but she has cat everything. It's hilarious. I think she might have autism because she reminds me of Lillie. Our breakfast consisted of bread with hard boiled egg cut up, sil (packaged herring), and then she had liver paste and about 5 different kinds of meat. I brought my own g-free bread and only had the egg and the packaged herring #vegetarianprobs. It was definitely one of the more interesting breakfasts I’ve had. :) haha.

On another day of lots of walking, we passed an old man (in his 80s) holding a rake, shaking, and looking at lawn filled with leaves. My first thought was to ask if we could help him but then I thought, no one accepts help here and their favorite word to say is “no” so we might as well keep walking. But then I thought of dad’s advice to find unique ways to serve people, so we asked him and he gladly accepted! We raked and loaded bag after bag of leaves while the old man and his wife held the bags open. Afterwards the lady tried paying us, literally tried shoving money in our coat pockets and we tried to explain that we just wanted to help. They both could NOT believe that 19 year old girls would help them do their yard work, and I couldn’t believe that they let us! I was so grateful that we were able to do SOMETHING that day.

We had a zone conference this week that was much needed. We left at five in the morning to get there on time and after the meeting we headed back to the train station to see hundreds of people waiting for busses instead of trains. There had been an accident from Malmö to Lund so long story short we were stuck there from 5-9:30! That was a long day. We didn’t get back home to our apartment until 11:30 but we had so much fun with the missionaries and it was so fun to see all of them. They are hilarious people. Elder Ricker made hats for Syster Pikesma, Richins, and me. Haha and our APs were with us all night at the train station- it was fun. President Newell’s advice to us all was to "Raise your level of effectiveness!" It was a much needed reminder for me.

Sorry this is the longest email of my life! I love you all and hope you have a wonderful week. We had the funnest night last night at the Bishop house. They fed us dinner and then we played giant jenga. I got everyone to play Big Boody and it reminded me of playing that at Nana and Papa’s with the whole extended family haha. I don’t think I have laughed as hard as I did last night since I got here to Halmstad. Good reminder to have more fun with the work- I have forgotten to do that this week and it really makes a difference.

I can’t believe it is fall again. It feels like yesterday that we were at the farmers market getting a call about the mission age change. That was a crazy week. I am grateful for my decision to serve a mission one year ago. I had no idea what was in store but I knew it would be wonderful and it truly has been.
Love, Adelide Louisa